Walter Pierce

Interstate 10 in BR high on ‘worst commutes' list

by Walter Pierce

Tell us something we didn’t know. A stretch of I-10 in Baton Rouge has garnered an ignominious rank of 13 on a list of the 75 worst commutes in the United States, besting Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Diego and dozens of other much larger cities.

Politics and culture Web site The Daily Beast, in partnership with traffic tracking firm INRIX, which gathers traffic information nationwide from 1.5 million GPS units, set out to rank the cities with the worst commutes based on peak-hour travel time and time spent in bottlenecks.

Baton Rouge’s data show that commuters spent an average of 93 hours per week in bottleneck congestion, 19 of them at the worst bottleneck — I-10 westbound at the Bluebonnet exit. The Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles earned the top ranking.